Wednesday, November 19, 2008

COLD

Cold weather has apparently settled in to stay a while. I hope this 'cold spell' is not a sign that our real winter will be even colder. It can happen, even around this part of the country. One fall/winter might be resort-like mild, but the next one resembling the upper reaches of the Artic. We had one of the latter type winters a while back, and it was not fun.

The summer had been one of those extremes - with temps in the 100+ range for days on end. Too soon winter arrived, and the thermometers nose-dived to the minus figures. Pipes froze and had to be thawed - carefully - to keep them from bursting.

Our son-in-law-to-be visited here during both of those seasons that year... coming in August for a family wedding event and enduring the heat with the rest of us; then back that January when he went under the house with hubby to help take care of the frozen pipes. I knew then that that young man was "a keeper"... and I was so right. He has been a terrific addition to our clan -- even if he does have some strange food preferences. Ha! Dumplings and sauerkraut, rhubarb pies... stuff like that is so 'foreign' to our soul-type southern food.

Yesterday's trip to take my sister to the doctor again, 4th time in as many weeks, was a total surprise. Instead of waiting an interminable time to be called back to the exam room, we went in almost immediately upon arrival, and the doctor came in right away. What has been a four-hour visit lasted only two hours yesterday. And the prognosis for my sister was encouraging, even though I still feel that the Symptoms - not the Cause(s) - of her problems are being treated.

Arriving home again - when it was still daylight instead of the dark rush-hour traffic I had anticipated - held another surprise. The Internet provider was having area-wide trouble and Nobody had access to email or the Internet for over three hours. Okay, what to do instead of sitting at the computer? At least the cable TV was not affected, and it was early news time, so TV was the substitute time-killer.

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